Picked up new (to us) car on Moday, cost about £9000. ('03 estate) When I was negotiating I told the salesman I didn't want to be back in a couple of months needing new brake discs as I had been caught like that before. ''Wear and tear sir, down to you'' duely given new mot and all looks fine. Get home and look at the service sheet......rear discs badly corroded warning there. I had an independent mot guy have a look, he says that while the discs would pass an mot in a short while they would need replacing, the rear of the discs were worse than the front.The dealer has offered a 50 50...£130 or so to me.... split cost to replace which I have accepted but swmbo and I feel we should not have to pay anything. Please give your opinion as to wether or not I am being unreasonable. Read more

...elementary, I fear, but it has never occured to me before. My licence "from" date is 2/9/75. Why us this as I have held a full licence since about 1964?

How can I find the actual date quickly, since DVLA won't release such information via email and calls to it cost 60p per minute from my mobile and waste time on a lot of unwanted information? Read more

SWMBO's commute is via a very heavily trafficked 2 way A road.

They're having a census on that road and pulled her up t'other morning, here goes the conversation..ish.. The censusee? i shall shorten to CB (census bloke)

CB goodmorning, like to ask you a few questions.
SW (hackles rising..sh'es from the Med...fuse set at .0001seconds) nothing to say just a grimace (that i know so well)
CB may i ask your address and postcode from where you started the journey?
SW why, do i have to tell you?
CB (slightly shirty) because we are the highways agency and we are gathering information to improve the road.
SW make it bigger!
CB if we can find out why people blah blah.
SW I live in town A and work in town B, i'm not giving you my address, but you don't need to stand here 8 hours a day asking stupid questions when it's blatantly obvious to anyone with half a brain that the road isn't big enough for the volume of traffic regardless of where it's going.
CB stands back possibly in fear of further tongue lashing...smiling slightly and muttered general agreement.
SW can i go now...goodbye.

Thats just about sums it up....i make no comment, being within striking distance, but you're welcome to..;)

Any questions? Read more

I have repowered my polo after a cam belt failure, original motor was AHS model, new motor is 98 AHS model. Almost everything appears same except plumbing of fuel rail.
The motor spins and has a spark but will not start?? I have been told since that you may need entire loom with engine?( new motor, old loom in car.) Is this potentially a problem?
There is a small crack around the coil/cdi but still have spark at plug.
any help appreciated Read more

My Passat developed an intermittent hesitation a few months ago which has progressively become worse. At first it would only happen once in a blue moon but now it's getting to the point where I'm not sure I want to drive it for more than a few miles.

It normally happens when trying to maintain a speed on an incline. The car then feels hesitant and you can feel that it isn't happy - at one point this afternoon it was so bad I almost thought I was running out of fuel. If you accelerate sharply for a brief second or two it clears but soon comes back within another few seconds.

I had a routine service by Tune Up about a month ago and when I advised of the symptoms (although they weren't so severe or common then) a fault code was found in the system - lambda lower limit error indicating that it was running rich, I hope I've got that right, I know nothing about such things?

Unfortunately Tune Up didn't have the time to investigate the problem fully (and in fairness I didn't tell them of the fault until they'd almost finished the service as it wasn't so much of a problem then) but they did disconnect the fuel tank vapour condensor which feeds into the inlet manifold to see if this might be causing the rich running. Unfortunately this had no effect on the problem and I'm in the dark as to what else it might be and I don't want to start replacing expensive parts that don't need replacing and won't solve the problem.

I've checked all the vacuum hoses and crank case breathers for leaks but they all look ok to me. I've also removed and cleaned the throttle body as somebody suggested that this might be to blame, but to no avail. Somebody also suggested that the coil and ECU relay can cause similar symptoms when they go bad but I doubt either of those parts failing would prompt an O2 sensor error?

Just to throw this in I also have an annoying resonance coming from what sounds like the exhaust midsection at about 2500 revs. Could my catalytic convertor have packed up causing the O2 sensor to fail or 'see' the wrong thing?

Along with the problem I've also noticed a drop off in performance and throttle response but interestingly fuel consumption doesn't seem to have been adversely affected.

Any help/suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks in advance,

Chris Read more